|
Mike Tait
21 May 2009
The mass media is central to modern society. Without its vast apparatus of information collection, selection and distribution – printing presses, cameras, satellites, paper deliverers, technicians and reporters – a national, let alone an international, economy and society would be impossible. Under democratic control the media could allow real dialogue on an unprecedented level and enable popular decision-making on a global scale. Under capitalism, it disorganizes grassroots decision-making and promotes conformity to authority.
Not only is the media central to modern society, it also helped create it. Before the printing press, written texts in Europe were rare and tightly controlled. The ultimate text – the Bible – was painstakingly handwritten in languages not understood by most people. Its authority came from above and was explained by a hierarchy of bishops that mirrored the military hierarchy of the knights and kings.
The printing press made texts cheaper. Not surprisingly, the Bible was the first book published in Europe by the new method and equally unsurprisingly, 30 years after the press was discovered in Europe in 1455 (it had already existed for about 700 years in East Asia) the Protestant Reformation swept away the monolithic power of the Church and laid the framework for the emergence of capitalism.
It was not only religion that was changed. The printed accounts of travelers returning from the civilizations of the New World upset the idea of feudalism as eternal and normal and, combined with the scientific Enlightenment of the 1700s (itself the result of easier distribution of texts), to cause a political earthquake – the overthrow of the divine right of kings.
The spread of writing and reading led to the emergence of a critical public sphere – a marketplace of ideas that mirrored the free market of early capitalism. Newspapers emerged in northwestern Europe (along with reading clubs and coffee-houses) in the 1700s that questioned the decisions of kings on the basis of public reason.
The French Revolution was the high point of this political movement and of the many newspapers of that time, that of Marat stands out. A tireless (and ruthless) defender of the revolution against counter-revolution, Marat’s paper L’Ami du people (the friend of the people) was anything but unbiased. As he himself wrote: “The influence that my paper has had on the revolution did not derive, as you can imagine, from closely reasoned arguments… but from the horror that it aroused among its readers when I boldly tore aside the veil covering the perpetual plots being hatched against our liberties by the country’s enemies, in league with the King… and from the courage with which I crushed every slanderous critic underfoot.”
While few newspapers were as revolutionary as Marat’s, all shared his disdain for objectivity. In New Zealand too, the press was originally fiercely partisan. The Dominion Post was originally set up by a group of Wellington businessmen to campaign for more autonomy from Britain, while the Otago Daily Times was set up in 1861 by Julius Vogel – NZ premier in the 1870s - to advance his political career.
The age of political campaigning in the mainstream media in NZ and other advanced capitalist countries came to an end though because of three related trends: The working class emerged as a coherent social force with its own press; business interests had substantially wrested control of the state from the old feudal ruling class; and the emergence of advertising. In New Zealand, you can see three different periods – first the politically campaigning press of the 1840s to 60s, second the commercial, competitive press of the 1870s to 1890s, and third the monopolization and concentration of the last century.
The end of political press saw the establishment of an ideal of media objectivity, which goes hand in hand with the change to a profit-making business. For media owners, the claim to tell the “truth” is an attempt to lull readers to trust the publication – which financially means to become more receptive to advertising. The sale of advertising also meant the price of newspapers to readers could be slashed. Newspapers were no longer a commodity that readers consumed. No. Newspapers were just part of the process that delivered audiences to the consumer – to the advertisers. As an example, in 1990, NZ On Air funding was about $62 million. Advertising revenue to the media in general amounted to $1067 million.
While the idea that the media is unbiased is easy to scorn it’s important to recognize that it is a two-edged sword. For media workers it has been used as tool to gain some control over their work. The idea that the media is the friend of freedom and democracy, the voice of the people, that it provides a public service can, in the hands of organized, confident journalists, be a powerful weapon against the bosses.
Unfortunately, the recent history of the political and industrial struggle inside the media has been one of defeat and demoralization. This demoralization reflects the history of the 20th century as the great promise of progress stagnated and soured. In the ‘midnight of the century’ – the dark days when freedom seemed doomed, the era from Mussolini through Stalin and Hitler to McCarthy, George Orwell wrote 1984: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”
Many on the left gave part of the blame for the triumph of Stalinism, the rise of fascism, and the post-war dominance of US capitalism to the media, which they saw as a tool to brainwash the masses (The Frankfurt School). But while the media was and is used to sideline dissent and to control information in a top-down way, it is not a result of an evil technology. Technology in itself is never evil – the context is all important. So Stalin triumphed because the revolutionary working class in Russia was decimated in the civil war, the failure of the German revolution of the 1918 to 23 led to the rise of Hitler and the dominance of the US after the war was underpinned by an economic boom – not just brainwashing.
A better model is the idea that the media manufactures consent – and marginalizes dissent. Under democratic control the media can allow real dialogue on an unprecedented level and enable popular decision-making on a global scale. Under capitalism, it disorganizes grassroots decision-making and promotes conformity to authority.
Nowadays, the media, like world system itself, is in a period of transition. Computerisation has had dramatic effects on the media – the first, and more shallow impact (the shift to off-set printing) led to mass layoffs in the 1980s, the evisceration of the media trade unions and the replacement of family-owned newspapers with multinationals like Fairfax and News Limited, which could afford the expensive new technology.
The turning point in the English-speaking world was the Wapping dispute of 1986 when some 6,000 newspaper workers went on strike against Rupert Murdoch’s News International. News International had secretly equipped a new offset printing plant for all its titles in the London district of Wapping and when the print unions announced a strike it activated this new plant with the assistance of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU). Offset printing allowed reporters to input copy directly, reducing the need for labour in the print halls, cutting costs and improving production time.
John Pilger worked in London at the time. He writes: “Murdoch's men waited for the signal to implement 'Project 800', a top-secret plan described by Murdoch . . . 'our dash for freedom'. When the unions finally realised they had been tricked and their agreements were worthless, they called a ballot and went on strike. 'We had given him an olive branch', said Dubbins, 'and he'd broken it in two and beat us around the head with it.'
As 'negotiations' technically were still in progress, the workforce could be dismissed without compensation. Thus, almost 5,500 people were sacked, many of them lifelong employees. When they protested, police smashed their pickets.
General-Secretary of SOGAT Brenda Dean said “We had people who came with their families, their children; they wanted to take part in a peaceful demonstration. They wanted to say to Murdoch, "You've not only done this to me, you've done it to my wife and kids." But the Metropolitan Police clearly had other instructions. They were there to protect the newspapers, to see that Murdoch got the Sun out, and the rest of his publications. We called them "paper boys", and that was exactly what they were.
“To achieve this, they acted in a most brutal way . . . I saw many people deliberately beaten up by the so-called riot police . . . The police went for decent, straightforward trade unionists as if it was a civil war situation. One of our people was killed by one of Murdoch's lorries, and the lorry didn't even bother to stop. There were several nervous breakdowns. Marriages broke up. Strong men I knew, and I don't mean physically strong, but men with leadership, turned bitter. It broke them. I'm not only talking just about the relatively well paid, but cleaners, canteen workers, who outnumbered the printers four to one - It was as if the British state had joined forces with Murdoch against us . . .”
The conservative trade unions, focused on national parliamentary changes, where unable to fight to defend their jobs and unable to adapt to the new technology. The result has been an increase in workload for media workers, a decrease in quality (reality TV anyone) and the rise and rise of monopolies.
These monopolies are threatened however by the rise of the internet, which, unlike offset printing, does not require vast capital. Information technology has resulted in an explosion of horizontal media and allowed counter-surveillance popular surveillance of the powerful. As Rage put it: “Orwell’s hell, a terror era coming thru, this little brother is watching you too.”
While the internet does demonstrate the way the technological dynamic of capitalism constantly undermines its social relations, in itself it won’t set us free – porn is after all the main content on the net.
What is to be done?
As socialists, our ultimate aim is a classless society, where all share in the wealth created by technology. We also believe that the struggle for this ultimate aim is the best way to humanize and improve the situation right here and right now. Revolutionary means are the best way to win reforms.
The media too, should be democratized. The most obvious way we do this is through protests that attract media attention. The series of anti-war protests we have built in Dunedin will without doubt be a major reason for the ODT using John Pilger’s columns in its world focus section.
It is also necessary to rebuild fighting trade unions within the media to defend jobs and quality. A strong journalists’ union would provide a counter balance to corporate control and allow better, more diverse reportage. Ultimately, we believe that the control of Murdoch and his like should be replaced by workers control of the media – a radically decentralized model which would blur the lines between readers and professionals and allow the promise of a democratic public sphere to be fulfilled.
But the most immediate task for socialists is to use our magazine and website to build an organization. While the media is a disorganizer at the moment, for revolutionaries it is a tool that cannot be ignored. Genuine revolutionary parties have to have a newspaper because workers power must be the achievement of workers themselves. Unlike Mao and Che Guevara’s guerilla warfare, revolutionaries is primarily a political struggle not a military struggle. We need a newspaper to work out our theory, to convince people to take action themselves, to provide arguments and organization to link different struggles.
Early on Lenin insisted on the importance of a newspaper, in contrast to the terrorist tactics that characterized opposition to Tsarism. It was essential that revolutionaries establish a newspaper which could keep a vigilant eye on every aspect of political and social life in Russia and would be able to mount nationwide arguments and exposures of autocratic atrocities: “Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in the Europe of today.”
The paper should centralize the political argument, drawing on the experience of diverse and scattered local struggles, generalizing from one to the other. But the paper is also an organizing tool:
“A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer. In this respect it may be compared to the scaffolding erected round a building under construction; it marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, permitting them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organized labour.”
The newspaper should be a tribune of the people, to consciously oppose and rally against “the flogging of peasants, the corruption of the officials and the police treatment of the ‘common people’ in the cities . . . the extortion of taxes and the persecution of the religious sects, the humiliating treatment of the students and liberal intellectuals.”
There are innumerable examples of issues that cry out to be covered better – the layoffs a Cadburys and Fisher & Paykel, the murder of Pihema Cameron, and substandard housing to name a few.
The newspaper is a scaffolding that we can build our organization around. It is a banner we can rally our supporters around. We’ve made great improvements to the magazine and website over the last three or four years but there is a great deal yet to do.
Unlike the ‘alternative’ media, Socialist Review has a clear purpose and editorial line. It is openly biased in favour of worker, students and the oppressed. We don’t think the “truth is out there” to be collected and disseminated by a neutral observer. By reporting on the world we aim to change it. The starting point – given the low level of struggle and our numerical weakness – is raising political, historical, theoretical consciousness. Making working class history available expands the boundaries of the possible for our readers. From there they can proceed to making history.
But just as the media can be is a scaffolding for a building under construction, it cannot be the construction itself. It is not possible to use the media alone to rebuild working class resistance. This was attempted recently by the Workers Charter newspaper. This paper was created in the hope that there was a rising tide of struggle that it could ride and bind together into a challenge to the system.
We supported it financially and politically because we wanted it to be right but we predicted that, without the support of an organization, it would fall down. This is what happened.
Our magazine and website is the best way – after the branch meetings – to reach out to a wider audience and test and improve our ideas in debate and the best way to reach out and create a structure that spans this country.
|
